Had some feedback a couple of years ago following a "successful" resus of a prime-of-life adult male who had suffered a cardiac arrest resulting from trauma. We had managed to get a pulse back on scene, but the patient was making no respiratory effort. The patient was transferred from scene by helicopter to a hospital specialising in trauma, about 25 miles away. He died in intensive care four days later, having never regained consciousness. Following this job I had the same kind of thoughts that you write about in this post: should we have bothered in what was a pretty hopeless situation; were we wrong to give his wife false hope; should we just have let him 'go' on scene; etc. A couple of weeks later the patient's wife contacted the Service with a message for everyone involved in the case, thanking us for our efforts and saying something like "thanks to you I had him for four more days". Questions all answered - we did the right thing.